All eyes and hope on Pope Francis

Our opinion: The Catholic Church makes history with its first South American pontiff. Can the new pope reassert a sense of moral authority and social relevance?

The selection of a new pope, for centuries steeped in ritual, intrigue and majesty, became all the more dramatic on Wednesday as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina emerged to the adulation of thousands in St. Peter’s Square.

It’s neither irreverent nor disrespectful of the history that’s been made to note that Pope Francis I, as he’ll be forever known, assumes the infallible authority within the Catholic Church at a time of grave and multiple crises. Those daunting difficulties only intensified under the troubled and abbreviated reign of Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis’ rigidly conservative predecessor.

Most threatening of all is the failure of the Catholic hierarchy to adequately address the sexual abuse scandal that it allowed to fester for decades, both in the United States and abroad. This lapse leaves the church’s moral authority compromised to an almost unimaginable degree.

Internally, the church is similarly, if less seriously, troubled — both by an alarming decline in the appeal of religious vocations and the ongoing challenges of its own self-governance.

That’s truly tragic. Both the religious world and the secular world need the church to re-emerge as an unquestioned force for social justice and spiritual leadership. Little good comes if an institution that has enriched the lives of billions remains a less potent force, either ecclesiastically or politically.

For observant Catholics and those who remain Catholic only by heritage or culture, these are critical times. For those who adhere to different faiths or have no religion at all, scrutiny is in order as well.

Pope Francis immediately raises hopes that the church could at once appeal to, if not entirely unite, those disparate constituencies. The church has looked for leadership where it never has before, to the world south of the equator so full of Catholics. If the church is ever to enjoy the redemption of a renewed relevance, it is best poised to do so under the guidance of a pope more drawn to social outreach than doctrinal warfare, which might fairly be expected of a prelate whose career was forged in Latin America.

As a priest, he earned a reputation for humility and demonstrated a commitment to economic justice. He established himself as a political force, as well, by trying to lead the church back toward broader acceptance after it had failed to challenge the murderous dictatorship that terrorized Argentina from 1976 to 1983.

For the first time, a pope has come from the ranks of the Jesuits, arguably Catholicism’s most intellectually accomplished order. But while the man who would become Pope Francis has toiled far from the Vatican and the press that covers it, he has not shied from controversy. Just a year ago, for example, he denounced the hypocrisy that he saw in Argentina’s priests.

“In our ecclesiastical region there are priests who don’t baptize the children of single mothers because they weren’t conceived in the sanctity of marriage,” he said. “These are today’s hypocrites. Those who clericalize the church. Those who separate the people of God from salvation. And this poor girl who, rather than returning the child to sender, had the courage to carry it into the world, must wander from parish to parish so that it’s baptized!”

Might this hint at a new inclusiveness in the church? The new pope’s own mission of salvation will be enhanced by similar words and by actions that go beyond. In the church and well beyond it, a time of turmoil yielded Wednesday to a day of hope. Yes, pray for an altogether more auspicious future.

4 Responses

Do the editors of the TU ever read what they write in these editorials? They say, “both the religious world and the secular world need the church to re-emerge as an unquestioned force for social justice and spiritual leadership”. Really? Unquestioned force? Every time Christians asserts themselves and stand up for some moral issue, we are slammed for doing so in these same editorial pages. Let’s see . . . gay marriage, euthanasia, abortion, sex education, religious freedom. The list goes on and on. Oh, perhaps the editors really mean those social causes that are politically correct and with which they personally agree. I’m sorry. I just don’t buy it.

Mark makes a good point. Being in favor of “social justice” is fairly non-controversial, but being in favor of specific goals to attain it become lightning rods,where the Church is accused of inappropriate meddling.

As for the lingering impact of the Church’s gross mishandling of the sexual abuse crisis–what is the statute of limitations on that? Whie critics seek to make an unprecedented change in the law to allow civil actions from decades ago to move forward, at what point can we declare it is not enough to merely make rote reference to the scandal as a way of dismissing the Church’s right to comment on social issues?

I’d like to know what Bergoglio was doing as the “spiritual leader” of Buenos Aires during Argentina’s “dirty War” fo teh 1970s and 80s when children were stolen and political prisoners thrown naked out of helicopters into the pacific?

Bergoglio claims he didn’t know anything, a point which has been refuted by some victims’ families.

Reminds me of how the Vatican helped Nazis after WWII escape justice by fleeing to a South American country…now which country was that? Hmmmm…